Photographing Animals, Family, and America

National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore talks about photographing American life in his home state of Nebraska, the importance of conservation photography, his children, and his wife's battle with cancer.

The National Geographic Live series brings thought-provoking presentations by today’s leading explorers, scientists, photographers, and performing artists right to you. Each presentation is filmed in front of a live audience at National Geographic headquarters in Washington, D.C. New clips air every Monday.

Joel Sartore: It was these types of pictures that got me noticed by Geographic. As I've gone forward through my career I started to do more and more stories on conservation. We do these types of pictures. And it's not a very comfortable feeling being this close to a bear on the edge of a river or lake but we do them so that we can get this type of picture in the magazine. Not very pretty, but very important if we want to move the needle of public opinion.

I get a lot of questions when I get up to speak and the number one question is have you ever come close to getting killed on assignments? So I thought I would launch right into that. You know, I've had a caiman bite a hole completely through my underwater housing in the Pantanal, Brazil and had to deal with polar bears that figured out that if they work at it long enough on my rusty, Chevy van that wouldn't start they could peel the doors open and eat me like a big sardine. Tried to photograph bison really close off of a feed truck, with a flash. Bison don't like flash any and they chase you under the truck and they keep you under the truck for about an hour. For a long time. They are very nimble. They're very nimble. But you know, in terms of being whacked by an animal you know, it's just bugs. It's insects that get you. So, these are the feet of a photographer who had not made a good picture in three days and was very nervous about that.

I got started just taking pictures just taking pictures I wanted to take. I just took pictures I thought were weird or different or interesting or funny. Cowboy roping a cat. Could be a lady walking her dog. Bad dogs make excellent pictures, it turns out. Some dogs are a little worse than others. But it was these types of pictures that got me noticed by Geographic. And that was 25 years ago now, hard to believe. For many years I took a lot of stories that dealt with human beings. And people say, Well, what was your favorite? Nebraska for sure, for sure. Because I can sleep in my own bed and be closer to my family that way. We're a car culture out there. It's a long time between anything, especially thrills I guess you could say. So, whether it's Carhenge in the western part of the state or demolition derbies or the middle-of-nowhere festival. It's all about cars out there. It could be mud volleyball that's a lot of fun. Or the fact that Nebraska invented rodeo, hard to believe. But you don't just shoot in the arena if you're a National Geographic person. You have to go behind the scenes. You go the bar the night before people are pulling their fake teeth out because they've been kicked in the face by this horse or that mule or whatever. It's good. Liquored up people do a lot of stuff for the camera that I can't really show you this evening. But we got that at least. The guy dusting the stuffed sheep in the back of the Cabela's store that's always a good time.

I've had this loving support of my family over the years couldn't do it without them because you know, what fun is it if you don't have somebody to love you going through life. Daughter Ellen, she... she taught me the value of always having the camera on standby, ready-to-go as a disciplinary tool. She hated having her picture taken whenever she'd throw fits and I'd get that camera and she'd shape right up. That did not work on my youngest, Spencer. He was more-- past tense of course he's grown up now but he was more of a professional fit-thrower. He would work in fits the way a potter the way a potter would work in clay or a painter would work in oil. You know, you ask him to throw a fit at home it's like don't waste my time, you know. He liked to throw fits in public as much as he could. Of course, you know, it could be on vacation at the Grand Canyon or it could be Easter Sunday, that's fine too. That's fine too. So... He's a good guy, he's a good guy. Sorry to do that to you Spencer but baby needs shoes, as they say. So, you know, as I've gone forward through my career I started to do more and more stories on conservation, and to me, good pictures should come from the conservation side. They could be funny or humorous, entertaining. They better be entertaining.

So, for a story on grizzly bears I was given eight weeks of assignment time I could break it up over the course of a calendar year. This is day two. Notice those are my boots up the tree. The tops of those boots are wet, don't ask why, exactly. Of course, reality is these are bears at basically a Hollywood facility. They train bears to fake roar and fake maul for the movies. And that bear is actually not making sound he's just opening wide to get donut holes tossed into his mouth from a trainer off to the side, so that's all there is to it. Now, why would a guy who is given eight weeks of assignment time to cover grizzlies in North America spend one full week documenting trained bears. Well... I was afraid that the bears in the wild wouldn't necessarily subscribe to National Geographic and want to have their picture taken. So, I loaded up as much as I could for that week, anything I could think up. And when I did go to Alaska finally I went to the most visually loaded place that I could find where I knew the bears were at Brooks Falls. This is how that picture was done. Big barbecue deck, people rotate in and out of there in hour long shifts, you put your name on a list. The bears stay over there, photographers stay over there. Lot of people from Germany and Italy jousting about. There is over a million pictures a year shot of those same bears fishing in that waterfall. When those guys leave, they go back to the lodge to have a nice dinner or whatever I'm laying along the edge of the lake trying to get pictures that nobody's ever gotten before. And we do these types of pictures and it's not a very comfortable thing being this close to a bear on the edge of a river or lake but we do them so that we can get this type of picture into the magazine. Not very pretty, but very important if we want to move the needle of public opinion, you guys. We really do want to try to change the world for better. So, what's the story here? Well, bears actually tolerate us just fine. We can't stand bears. Bears love our garbage, full of food and good smells, but... they get a little aggressive, get into our dumpsters they get into our bird-feeders next and our dog food. They break into our cabins and-- A fed bear is a dead bear. They end up getting shot and sold at the state of Alaska surplus sale, twice a year in Alaska. So, with bears it's fairly straight forward, you know keep them out of the garbage, everything is gonna be okay. They're, you know, they don't-- they kill one person a year on the North American continent so they tend to get a very bad rap even though we lose many times that to domestic dog fatalities every year in this country.

What about the more quiet species? What about wolves? They're more of an enigma and this is the problem with wolves because people want to view them either as something cute, like a pet or a blood thirsty killer. What are wolves? We want to know, don't we? We're cued every minute of every day how to think about everything, from our news to who is good and who is bad in any reality show. Well, with most wildlife, including predators there ain't no such thing. Wolves are just wolves. That's it.

Story on koalas. Shoot the weird, the different, the idiotic. Photograph the cute and cuddly in the hopes that people will see this and say Why does that human mother have a baby koala? Well, because this is the truth for northern koalas. I was shocked when I went over there. Really. I mean, they're confined to golf courses in the suburbs and when they come off the golf course, they're trapped. They get hit by cars and they get attacked by domestic dogs and it's something awful. And still the government of Australia would not grant the koala in the northern part of the country protection. The nurses at one koala hospital, I went to who would've all gotten fired had they known we were-- that their management know we were gonna make this picture. They saved back one week's worth of koalas in a freezer all killed by dogs, including that mother and baby. We ran that picture around the world and the government of Australia changed the law and offered protection to those koalas a few months after the story came out. Can I say that picture did it? It sure didn't hurt, sure didn't hurt. So that's why we do this. Thank you. So that's why, that's why we do this. That's why we go out and risk our necks and we're gone from our family. We really want to try to move the needle, so... twenty stories into it or so I had really been going gung-ho, hadn't I? Just had the world by the tail, where's the next hot story where can I go to move the needle, move the needle-- Well, life throws you a curve ball sometimes. You know, we all have our ways of marking time, don't we? My son came along during a story on America's Gulf Coast. My daughter came along during a long story on the Endangered Species Act. Another child came along with a pack of gray wolves. Twenty stories into it though, it's this one the story on Alaska's north coast that I'll remember most. It was a story about the loss of wilderness and innocence. And the story during which my wife got cancer.

We met at a blues bar in college. She had long blonde hair and thought I was funny. Beautiful and graceful and patient, she has remained my muse for 30 years now. She may have gotten tired of all the picture taking now and then. The picture taking pretty much stopped though the day she found that tumor in her right breast. It was the size of a hen's egg, which is usually lethal. Weirdly, it was Thanksgiving when she was diagnosed. Man! You think you're all set. You got the world by the tail. Not so much. Not so much. Some days she was so sick she couldn't watch TV and she really likes to watch TV. One day she was so sick she couldn't even talk. These are the only pictures I took of her because I didn't want to torture her if this was it. Cancer is really a thief, isn't it? It is really a thief. It touches all of us. It steals our time. We had three kids at home, the youngest one was two years old. I'd go to her at her bedside frequently and I'd say You gotta get better. And she'd say Oh, thanks, hon, I know you love me-- I'd say, No, no, no. You have to get better, I cannot do this. This is amazingly hard. Much harder raising kids than working for National Geographic. I didn't think that was possible. We went to her oncologist every week and her doctor took tests and told us we were doing great but... he'd seen it all and we could see the worries in his eyes. He carried our burden too. He really did. Now, forgive me for saying this, but cancer also made me a better father, I'd like to think. I was so jazzed up on work that I once tried to get the doctor to induce labor, so I could go out and cover that wolf story. That's bad, but now, hopefully I've changed. Got a new life, and a new way of seeing all from one malicious lump. Sometimes on our back porch we'd sit together at sunset, she got better finally. We didn't talk much, we just held hands, mostly. We'd sit together until the last of the light was gone until we couldn't see anything at all. Hear just... two heartbeats in the darkness, I guess you could say. And to this day, we're in no hurry at all.

Photographing Animals, Family, and America

National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore talks about photographing American life in his home state of Nebraska, the importance of conservation photography, his children, and his wife's battle with cancer.

The National Geographic Live series brings thought-provoking presentations by today’s leading explorers, scientists, photographers, and performing artists right to you. Each presentation is filmed in front of a live audience at National Geographic headquarters in Washington, D.C. New clips air every Monday.